


please tell me who i am

by bevcrushers (dothraloki)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Loneliness, Post-Season/Series 12, Season/Series 11, Season/Series 12, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23215450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothraloki/pseuds/bevcrushers
Summary: Four new faces stand in front of her, expectant, awaiting her orders. They are untainted too. They don’t know her yet. Later, she wonders if it’d been better if they never did.-why does thirteen hold her companions at a distance?
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	please tell me who i am

**Author's Note:**

> an exploration of the thirteenth doctor, identity, love, friendship and rivalry

At first, she thinks she’s free.

She falls through the sky and it feels like second chance – unattached by the thick, sharp vines that form her memories, some of them good, some of them bad, all of them hurt. She never knows who she is at first – regeneration energy on the brain, always sends her a bit mad. Forgetting, she finds, is an interesting thing. Bewildering – yes, scary too, but it also brings relief. Unencumbered by her name, by her legacy, she drives forward anew and her instincts rise like hackles, _protect, protect, protect._

Four new faces stand in front of her, expectant, awaiting her orders. They are untainted too. They don’t know her yet. Later, she wonders if it’d been better if they never did.

-

She is The Doctor. It’s her name and it’s her profession.

It means carrying worlds on her shoulders, and they’re heavy, she finds, they always are. It means a tension in her neck, and her hearts beating fast, and never staying in same place for too long.

She is The Doctor. But it was easier when she didn’t know her name.

-

The Doctor meant to tell them, her fam.

At first, they don’t ask, and she’s grateful that she doesn’t need to answer. They’re taken in by the mystery of the traveller and her time machine. It’s enough for them, and it’s more than enough for her, and over time she can almost convince herself that’s all she is.

The spell doesn’t shatter as much as it chips away. They’re in a restaurant at the far end of the universe, surrounded by aliens from all walks of life – Slitheen dine happily beside Sontarans, and Mentopera serve drinks that smell faintly of diesel and brimstone. It’s gaudy and kitsch and she adores it.

“And then,” she says with a flourish, dipping her chips in her milkshake. “It turns out the Daleks had actually built _him_ , not the other way around.”

Ryan’s eyes widen above the brim of his mug.

“I don’t remember how we got out of that one, actually. It was hundreds of years ago, now,” says the Doctor, wistfully. “I’m sure it was dead clever.”

“Hang on, hundreds of years ago?” Graham raises his eyebrows. “Doc, it was the Second World War. How old _are_ you?”

The Doctor’s smile falters for a fraction of second. “Time travel,” she says. “Doesn’t quite work linearly for me.”

“Still,” says Yaz. “I don’t see how that could’ve been hundreds of years ago for you.”

“I s’pose I’ve been around for a bit,” the Doctor struggles to keep her voice light. “I’m getting another drink, anyone want anything?”

-

She’s in the TARDIS, elbows deep in an old invention she’d finally got around to finishing – a lamp that also tells the time. They have a bit of down time between trips since Graham and Ryan are needed back in Sheffield for a few days. The Doctor found she’d never been quite good at down time. Her brain buzzes loudly, persistently, half-focusing on ten different things at once, a bit like a fish that can’t stop swimming lest it drowns.

Yaz is perched on the stairs, chin in hands. She’s quite content, it seems, to hand the Doctor tools and listen to her talk. This time round, the Doctor loves talking. Talking helps her think.

“I’m thinking moonlight swimming on Y’x’pran,” she says, over the sound of her hacksaw. “The water’s mauve and the sky’s silver. We’d have to go in the winter though, since that’s when the piranhas die off.”

“Did you say piranhas?”

“They’re not that bad actually,” says the Doctor. “I think I made friends with one last time I was there. Pass us the hyperspanner, would you, Martha?”

There’s a long moment’s pause. The worst part is, the Doctor doesn’t even notice until she reaches behind for the hyperspanner to find it still missing.

When she looks up, Yaz is watching her carefully. Her voice comes out tight. “Yaz.”

“Of course,” says the Doctor brightly, forcing a smile. “Right you are, Yaz. Brilliant Yaz.”

She doesn’t stop to dwell on it, doesn’t pause for even a second as she rattles off details about twelve other planets. She’s half-hoping, if she talks quickly enough, loudly enough, she can force Yaz to forget too; that there won’t be any questions, that Yaz will stop looking at her like _that -_ a curiosity, a tome of old secrets.

But she does ask, when the Doctor breaks for tea and biscuits half an hour later. Yaz’s voice is quiet beneath the brim of her mug, like she’s scared to hear the answer, “Who’s Martha?”

The Doctor doesn’t look up from her own cup. She watches the loose bits of tea swirl around the surface. “A friend,” she says, eventually. “A very dear friend.”

She doesn’t know if Martha would quite concur with that, though, and a wave of fresh guilt threatens to topple her over.

“Were there many other people before us?”

The Doctor can’t help but snort at that. And though she doesn’t mean to be unkind, her voice comes out like ice, “Oh yes,” she says. “Plenty.”

And then she stands, discarding her tea in favour of her goggles. “Got to get on with this.”

Her fingers move quicker as she fiddles the motherboard. She keeps talking about planetary atmospheres and alien delicacies and Yaz doesn’t ask again.

-

It’s late at night, probably. The fam are asleep, and the TARDIS engines wheeze gently as they stand orbit. The Doctor whirls around the console room with no one to impress, and no audience means herself, her thoughts, her memories.

She’s thinking about the other people who stood in this room with her once. People who tethered her to this spot, who pulled her in like gravity and stopped her from flying into the stratosphere. She’s thinking about how much she misses them.

The fam know enough that she’s no longer the distant, friendly stranger who promised them the stars. But she’s not the Doctor either, the Time Lord from the constellation of Kasterborous, the destroyer of worlds. The Doctor thinks about the people who knew and stuck around anyway. Not many of them are left, not many of them she can still talk to, and _oh, how she misses talking to them._

She runs her hand across the console, and feels it vibrate beneath her fingertips.

She’s old. So, so old.

-

The Master storms back into her life with a smile like knives.

Her hearts leap, partially from fear, but partially from excitement. She thrives on this, the adrenaline of the moment, no time to think, no time to dwell. _Keep on running._

He’s dangerous, manic, and frightened with the side of charm that serves to make the threat even worse. He looks at her with hatred in his face and nostalgia in his eyes. The Doctor has to protect her friends, she can’t be seduced by it, not again. The Master’s run out of chances and goodwill; he’d proved that last time.

But he’s another kind of tether, she supposes, a tether to a past she thought was done with, buried, tucked beneath the covers; a past she was terrified of having to deal with again. Her fam look at her for explanation, but she’s not finished running yet because telling them would make it real.

-

The Doctor doesn’t sleep often, and she rarely dreams, but she does the night she faces the Master down.

She dreams of Gallifrey. She’s running through the forest, and the long grass tickles her legs. Koschei is chasing her and she’s laughing, breathless, giddy, ecstatic.

But then the sky rumbles overheard and darkness spreads like watercolour on wet canvas. Koschei is still chasing her. He’s smiling, but it’s not a friendly smile, and she’s stumbling through the knotted roots of the old trees that twist above them, gnarled and bare. One catches her foot and she’s spinning, falling.

She tries to push herself off the ground but the Master’s hand grips her shoulder.

“Got you Doctor. Finally.”

-

_Contact._

_Contact._

_Contact._

Gallifrey’s scorched and the Master won’t pick up.

She stares at the lever on her console and thinks to herself, _Well Doctor. You got your wish._

-

“ – be needing our sunglasses? Doc, are you listening?”

The Doctor rises above an ocean that threatens to sink her. Her ears are ringing hollow, and nausea rolls in her gut. She’s been staring at the same picture on the viewscreen for the last two minutes, and the fam are watching her in the way they do these days – silent, frowny.

“Sunglasses – no,” she says. “The sun’s only visible for thirty-six minutes and it’ll scorch you. I’ll make sure we get there before that, though.”

Graham says nothing, but she’s not oblivious to the furious, non-verbal communication happening between the three of them – meaningful looks and raised eyebrows. A less tolerant version of herself wouldn’t have put up with it, she’s sure, but this Doctor finds she can’t even bring herself to care.

Then Ryan finally asks, discomfort in his voice, “Doctor, is everything alright?”

“Always.”

“You just seem a bit,” Yaz tries. “I dunno – distracted?”

“Travelling through time,” The Doctor blinks back the image of Gallifrey burning in her mind. “It’s not as easy as it looks, you know.”

-

_“You weren’t very nice to him.”_

The Master’s voice slips into her mind like treacle, and her eyes snap open. She’s collapsed on one of the chairs in the console room, a book on astro-mechanics upturned on her chest.

“What?”

 _“Your ‘friend,’”_ he says. “ _One of your humans. You shouted at him over that pathetic Earth poet you’re so fond of. Your friend was right, you know; one person’s life against billions. I thought maths was your strong suit.”_

The Doctor clenches her jaw. “Oh, come right in. Don’t bother knocking.”

 _“I always told you – you need to get better at shielding your mind,”_ The Master’s grins. “ _Anyone could walk in.”_

“Where are you? I’ve been looking everywhere.”

 _“Do you think I’m stupid, Doctor?”_ a burst of indignant fury. She feels it – flecks of red and orange sparking in her mind. _“Were you expecting me to give you co-ordinates?”_

“I wanted to talk,” she says. “I wanted to understand –"

_“What’s this, if not talking?”_

“Face-to-face,” she insists, firm. “Or don’t you trust me?”

 _“Oh love,”_ his voice turns as hard as diamond. “ _Of course, I don’t trust you.”_

She can’t help but smile at that – wry, dark. “Pity that.”

“ _You’ll see me again, though_ ,” his voice begins to trail off, like wisps of mist in the winter air. _“Very soon.”_

-

The Doctor is trapped in the Matrix. She’s trapped and her friends are in trouble.

Desperation pricks at the edges of her. The Master monologues for an audience of one, all frantic energy and ego – she doesn’t have time for this, this performance, this eagerness to impress.

The Doctor _hates_ him.

But then he moves closer, gaze sweeping over her; if she didn’t know any better, she’d say his expression is one sympathy. “Brace yourself,” he says, and his eyes contain impossible depths of sadness. “This is going to hurt.”

 _Koschei,_ is the last thing she thinks before heaviness sweeps over her.

-

The Master has finally broken her.

He said he would do, and he does, and she chafes against herself, outrage burning in her chest. “Why would they lie? Why would they do that?”

The Master looks at her, empty. “I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.”

She is without a name, without a race, without a planet. She is not The Doctor.

Who is she?

She’s floating in the stratosphere all alone.

-

Nineteen days, twenty hours, eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. All alone in her dimly lit cell in the middle of nowhere. The Doctor’s not quite willing to call herself stuck yet, but she’s been through parts one, two and three of all one-hundred-and-eight of her escape plans to no avail. 

On the twentieth hour of her twentieth day, she finally relents. Plan one-hundred-and-nine.

_Contact._

She feels him before she hears him, and it sends spirals of colour shooting through her mind, swirls of violet and burgundy and lilac. _Relief._

_“Oh dear, my silly old Doctor,”_ says the Master around a grin. _“What have you got yourself into?”_

“You’re alive.”

_“Like Lazarus, darling.”_

She sags against the wall. Her smile is a tired one.

_“Where are your ragbag team of vermin?”_

Irritation creeps down her spine. He always knows which buttons to press. “My friends aren’t here yet. I’m working on it.”

The Master can feel her uncertainty. He spreads out in her mind – apprehension replaced by smugness.

 _“You’ve done this to yourself you know,”_ he says. _“Pushed them all away. The Doctor in the days of old would’ve had countless humans prostrating themselves before them all to win just a momentary glance of appreciation. I would’ve given the one with the pinstripe suit and the stupid hair thirty minutes before someone came to rescue him.”_

“Shut up - "

 _“- And so you turn to me,”_ he chuckles. _“What has become of you?”_

She rakes a hand over her face and pulls her knees up to her chest. A good question, that.

 _“They don’t know who you are do they? Your 'friends.' Not like I do,"_ his tone twists, suddenly delighted. _“They just think you’re just an eccentric. Harmless, and fun. Tell me, Doctor, did you tell them about the murders? The genocide?”_

“I said, _shut up_ ,” her voice rings out now, echoing off the steel walls and he cackles in her head long and loud.

“ _What do you think their reaction would be if they found out you’re just like me?”_

“I’m not anything like you,” she spits. “You tried to break me, and it didn’t work. It’ll never work because I’m so much better.”

 _“You’re worse,”_ he snarls. _“At least I walk through the universe knowing what I am.”_

“What you are is sociopathic,” she stands now, dispelling tension through her closed fist. “You’re unfeeling. Selfish. You seek out evil.”

“ _Let me ask you a question, Doctor. Do your new friends know they’re about to become part of your long list?”_

The Doctor stops at that, and she feels the Master's cruel satisfaction.

“ _Just like Bill Potts. Or Amy Pond. Or Rose Tyler. Or Donna Noble, that was a bad one, wasn’t it? Maybe you’ll discard them like you did with Martha Jones? Those are just some of the more recent ones, we could go back even further if you’d like –"  
_

The Doctor’s blood curdles deep inside her. Her voice comes out sharp, like a sheet of glass. “How do you know about all of them?”

“ _Aside from the ones I've had the displeasure of meeting, I f_ _ound them on your old TARDIS,"_ he shrugs, easy _._ _“Your past self was kind enough to give me the information – of course he didn’t know that’s what he was doing,”_ he smirks. _“Not a very good friend, are you?”_

“You still answered me, didn’t you?”

A pause. His voice comes out wary. _“So I did.”_

“You were my friend," she says. "You were more than that. Once.”

 _“Once,”_ he murmurs. _“A long time ago.”_

“Do you ever miss it, Koschei?” she leans back against the wall, eyes closed. "Sometimes, I do. Sometimes I wish none of that stuff had happened between us."

There’s a moment’s long hesitation. Then his mood turns spiky and angular. 

_“This is why, Doctor. This is why you’re all alone. You think I’m just as stupid and as easily manipulated as your human pets,"_ The colours drain from his voice now, leaving behind a cold husk. He drops to a whisper, _“You don’t know how to be a friend.”_

The Doctor's jaw sets. She says nothing.

“ _You called me a sociopath. You called me unfeeling, selfish - b_ _ut_ _of the two of us, who is more dangerous? A selfish person who knows they’re selfish, or a selfish person who pretends to be kind?”_

“Master -"

 _“Goodbye, Doctor, and good luck,”_ says the Master, and the walls rise up.

_-_


End file.
